Encouraging interactions in new adventuring parties

[mrrockitt]

Hi all.

Although I'm thinking of this for D&D 5e role-playing currently it could easily apply to any party-based games so I thought I'd post it here.

Not having DM'd for about 15 years until late last year, I'm relatively new/out of date about modern role-playing and DM'ing techniques. I recently listened to a 'What would the smart party do?' podcast and it gave me an idea that I would like some opinions on.

But first, a little background:

I am DM'ing for several parties currently, involving brand new players, experienced players and others who have played a bit but are very quiet. I also have the slight difficulty that I use the Lost Lands setting by Frog God Games for these adventures (which I love!).

Obviously we have the usual issues such as new players not being used to role-playing games and other players not being familiar with the setting and having little or no knowledge of the history, geography and personalities of the Lost Lands.

Most of the issues I have now overcome or 'ironed-out' over the last year and a half. For example, I continually communicate out and populate the Lost Lands world with the help of the wonderful World Anvil (https://www.worldanvil.com) and snippets from campaign books but there is one thing I'd appreciate a little advice with please...

As mentioned earlier, we have some players who say very little and find it very difficult to engage with their characters and the other player's characters. One of the parties I DM for are younger players and we have had various players joining and leaving along the way which doesn't help with the immersion. Now, I appreciate this is not a new issue in role-playing games, some of us find it easier than others to open up and act in character, this is fine but I'd like to help my players with this as much as I can.

The Smart Party podcast (I think it was the 'Dying in the First Ten Minutes' one), was talking about giving the player's characters in a new adventure some background info about other characters in the game.

For example:

Character A knows a fact about the background of character C; character B heard a dark rumour about the people of the village from which character A originated; character D might have heard that character C saved several children from a hideous monster and is a hero back home.

So, I'm looking for rumours/gossip/story hooks/plot points to give them something to get them started and encourage interaction and conversation.
Obviously all characters can have some background history in most role-playing games but the other characters don't necessarily know about this at the beginning of their journey together, may never need to know it or it might in fact be a secret that will never get out in game.
Often characters might have come from all over the game world and just meet up in the ubiquitous tavern and off they go! This is a perfectly acceptable way to start adventures but it would be nice sometimes to have a bit more 'flesh on the bone' than that!

What I want to do is let characters in the game know certain background facts about their fellow characters so they will form opinions early on and hopefully this will help to encourage in-party discussion/interaction. By doing this I'm trying to engender opinions about other characters, positive or negative, but also to give potential quest hints, pointers on places to travel and create a little tension or at least points for conversation between players. It might prompt a player to remember a pertinent fact when they arrive in a certain village or meet a certain NPC. These should not be game-changing moments necessarily but just interesting facts or fiction that might lead to conversation, conflict, quests, stories, journeys, etc, etc.

So, basically I'm looking for any advice on how to do this best and how other DM's generally encourage conversation between characters in their games? I should say, I'm not looking for rumours about NPC's as there is plenty of that in most adventures but particularly how best to introduce information between the characters themselves to encourage player and character interaction.

Hope that all makes sense!
Thanks all

 

[Odysseus]

I havn't done a great deal of this. But when I have successfully it involved interaction with NPCs. Either someone asking the PC about something in his background, or recognizing an PC etc.
To use your example. An NPC might meet the party and say" arn't you the hero who saved the kids" or " You look familiar, arn't you from the village with the dark rumor."
I've tried less successfully using objects. Coins,posters, messages and maps. Which i found better for plot clue.

 

[mrrockitt]

Thanks Odysseus. Good point about the NPCs but I especially want to encourage in-party chat. Clearly some players get this and will happily role-play party interactions but others are very reluctant to take part. So what I'm really thinking about is the best ways to get players to open up to each other and get to know each other's characters a little better and at an earlier stage in their adventuring.

 

[Nytmare]

I was always a big fan of having my D&D players borrow a rule or two from the Burning Wheel school of thought. Most commonly by having them to add a "quality" and "flaw" to their character. Basically one thing that everyone who likes the character would agree on as a positive trait, and one thing that everyone who hates the character would agree on as a negative. Not even for any kind of mechanical bonus, just something to glance down and guide or even explain a character's actions after the fact.

Quality: Smart - Flaw: Arrogant
Quality: Friendly - Flaw: Gullible
Quality: Chivalrous - Flaw: Fanatical

"Well, my character is insecure, so even though I think we should save the Duke, I'm going to hem and haw about it and play devil's advocate."

"I'm cautious. I argue that we should take our time, go slowly, and test the floor for traps."

"I did write klutz for my flaw. I guess that's why I rolled a 1."
​

They were as much as a sign post for the other players as they were to the person playing the character.

"Darraz is 'unreliable' so I'm not going to trust him to stay up alone tonight for a watch. I'll sit up with him."
​

They were far easier to parse than a page and a half of character background that no one but the player was probably going to bother to read, and it was much more useful than knowing the height, weight, and eye color of the rest of the party.

You could even go for a more direct, antagonistic route. "Come up with one thing your character likes about the character to your right, and hates about the character to your left."

I think that the problem you might run into with giving the meatier "A knows B about C and doesn't know that D stole E from F" is that it will mostly likely be lost amidst all the other information swamping the (especially new) players. It's a lot of information to track, and runs the risk of being useless from week to week when the cast of characters runs the risk of changing drastically because people keep dropping out or not showing up every night. It's an interesting mechanic for like a dinner party LARP where the role play and interaction is the backbone of the game, but for a bunch of random people playing D&D (especially people who might not be all that interested in the added theatrics), that adds a lot of extra stuff to keep track of.

 

[MNblockhead]

Hi, you and I have a lot of common. I started DMing again when 5e came out, after having not DMed or played TTRPGs since 1990.

Also, my current campaign is also set in the Lost Lands. Specifically, Rappan Atthuk, but if they get bored of the Dungeon of Graves, I have the Bard's Gate, Borderlands, City of Brass and other books. I'm also excited about the forthcoming setting book for the Lost Lands that they are currently Kickstarting.

I don't have to prompt my players too much on this. They are all experiences players, but still, it helps to give some prompts to keep things interactive. Here are some things I like to do:

The A-Team Intro. Remember the opening credits of televison action serials in the 1980s? They would show each character for a few seconds in the middle of some action that seemed to tell you most of what you needed to know about that character's role in the show. The A-Team is a classic example. Have each play introduce their character by describing two or three action scenes. What do they look like, what are they doing, how are they behaving, how are other reacting to them. For more about this and character introductions in general, see DM David's post How to Get D&D Players to Make Unforgettable Character Introductions That Take a Minute or Less.

Also, I have character tents on my DM screen, that serve to show initiative and marching order. But their most important function is to give information on the characters. Both sides have the character's name, race, and class. On the DM's side I also have AC, passive perception, weight, and a very brief summation of their backgrounds. On the players side, there are also few adjectives that the player wants the other players to know about their character.

Next, out of combat, I try to take Chris Perkins advice to listen more than I talk. As the DM you need to be comfortable with some silence. I remember when I was first tutoring student of English as a Second Language. The supervisor would always instruct us to just wait silently more than we were comfortable after asking a question. Many people tend to feel the need to fill dead air space. As a DM, let the players know that you expect them to work out amongst themselves what they course of action will be. Provide any open exposition and scene description and ask, what do you all do? And...just...SHUT UP...and...wait. And listen. This can help you do a bit a prep without making the came feel like it is slowing down, because they should be busy discussing what they are going to do. Also you can get some great ideas from their discussion.

In the "old days" it was common for games to be run with large groups of players and for their to be caller. I think assigning one person to explain what everyone in the group will be doing can be useful for small groups as well. It FORCES the group to talk and plan and understand what each person is doing. It creates more engagement. Which is why the "break out into small groups and report back" is used so much in education, workshops, and conferences.

During combat, however, I go around shining the spot light on each character in initiative order asking the player what their character is doing. BUT I found it helps to have more engagement by explaining what the other players are doing. I mean they should be listening and I'm not just repeating what everyone before them said, but I try to work in a few quick details of at least one other player's situation as part of asking then what they are doing on their turn.

Another think I find interesting is to find different ways to prompt players to describe what their character is doing. If you are always just asking what actions they take on their turns, it is less likely they will bring in their backgrounds and it will be less likely for other players to engage with other players characters beyond tactical decisions.

So, instead of always saying "it's your turn, what does your character do" try other ways to prompt this information that may also prompt more engagement with their character background and other characters.

The constable laughs at Grabsall McGuffin's attempt to intimidate him, how does he react?

Similarly, sometimes when something in the story may have more emotional potential or where a characters background may give the situation more impact, has:

How does your Grabsall feel about that? What's his response?

Once players are get in the mode of role playing off of each other, the DM will rarely need to give prompts. They'll just respond based on your description of the scene and the NPCs words and actions. But for newer players, prompting them to not only tell you what rules-based action they take, but also how they feel about it, what their actions look like, maybe even why they are taking that action.

A bit of third-person description and metagaming can help with engagement. I encourage players to describe motives. "Grabsall, seeing that bandits attacking the caravan are orcs, remembers his own parents death at the hands orcs and goes into a rage."

 

[mrrockitt]

Thanks Guys.

Some great suggestions and advice there!

Nytmare, love the idea of the quick facts about each player and the hating or liking those on either side! Will definitely try some of that, especially the one about not trusting those 'on watch', could create some interesting situations

MNblockhead, lots of great ideas there....

I should add that I am DM'ing using Fantasy Grounds due to geographical distances. This does change the dynamic somewhat - the players do not look each other in the eye so perhaps interaction suffers a little but on the other hand, some people probably prefer the anonymity and might actually open up and prefer acting as their characters better when out of sight of other players.

Also, as mentioned we have two distinct groups. I think you are right Nytmare about not making it too complicated with the new players, especially if they keep coming and going. But the other group are experienced players (at least a year experience each and some a lot more). In this group we have one or two players who are polite and understand their characters technically but do not really interact so much with other party members. It's these that I want to encourage more and give more hooks for conversation.

I really like the suggestions about challenging the players to explain their characters feelings and responses regarding situation as MNblockhead suggested and will try to use this in the next session on Thursday.

I guess it doesn't help that I personally love the role-playing aspect of the games much more than the statistics and combat side so I suppose I'm a bit biased!

MNblockhead, glad to hear you are a fellow Froggie I plan to run Rappan Athuk at some point but would have to create it all manually on Fantasy Grounds which is a time-consuming process! Most of our adventures so far have been in or around Bard's Gate.
I will PM you privately about Lost Lands games as don't want to take the thread away from it's original purpose or sound like I'm advertising for them!

Thanks again both of you!

 

[MNblockhead]

MNblockhead, glad to hear you are a fellow Froggie I plan to run Rappan Athuk at some point but would have to create it all manually on Fantasy Grounds which is a time-consuming process! Most of our adventures so far have been in or around Bard's Gate.
I will PM you privately about Lost Lands games as don't want to take the thread away from it's original purpose or sound like I'm advertising for them!

Thanks again both of you!

I believe the Rappan Athuk will be released on Fantasy Grounds and that it has been in the works for some time. See: https://www.fantasygrounds.com/foru...antasy-Grounds&p=355504&viewfull=1#post355504

It was also mentioned during their Tuesday Frog Chat on Discord. I don't use FG, I've been entering the content from the PDF into RealmWorks. It sounds insane but it is basically how I read and familiarize myself with that massive mega dungeon, which the benefit that I will have all the maps ready to display and all the content hyperlinked.

Still, with Rappan Athuk in FG and I believe there is talk of the Lost Lands setting guide being in FG...if all that stuff gets put in FG I'm going to have to seriously consider buying the software and learning it. Didn't like it in the past but I didn't test it with pre-created content.

It is too bad RealmWorks and Frog God Games had a falling out. Only the content promised during the RealmWorks Kickstarter will be available when the RealmWorks Content Market goes live. But they will not support anything else from FGG.

 

[mrrockitt]

Was not aware about the issue with Realmworks but Fantasy Grounds is quite well-supported by them. I've also converted a few small bits over myself such as sections of the Bard's Gate campaign book and the Riot Act and you are right, converting it yourself is a good way to learn the content! Would love to see Rappan Athuk on FG in future though but obviously a large amount of work. I've pretty much resigned myself to convert it onto FG one level at a time. I have all the PDF maps from a recent Humble Bundle and they do have this on the FG store:

https://www.fantasygrounds.com/store/product.php?id=FGGFGPFRAB

Unfortunately not for 5e and no plans to convert it I believe but I guess if they are doing the full Rappan Athuk conversion at some point then it's not needed.

 

[PrometheanVigil]

So, basically I'm looking for any advice on how to do this best and how other DM's generally encourage conversation between characters in their games?[/B]

Interaction Moments aka IMs.

I came up with these a few years ago while hosting 8-10+ player games regularly. They are the best thing for the social side of RPGs ever. I've seen no other GM ever do this or even see it talked about online which is crazy since its so simple but so powerful.

They are literally 5-10 mins set aside specifically for players to talk in-character with each other. They can be interspersed in your session flow as much or as little you like. Ideally, you encourage players to get up, walk around and chat with each other. If they need to make a roll, they come straight back to you and roll in your presence -- other than that, you can get on with some admin work (or hasty re-plan of your scenario if its gone off the rails!).

It's really just a big breather for you as a GM but it's a fun one. I've found players will hedge into cliques of 2-4 and they can be fluid based on IC events and internal politics. This is awesome because newer players tend to cling together and experienced link up based on their particular IC needs -- it's also handy for reining in players who are bit antisocial or think they're a Puppetmaster(tm).

It's pretty great to see it all when you step back!

 

[S'mon]

Interaction Moments aka IMs.

I came up with these a few years ago while hosting 8-10+ player games regularly. They are the best thing for the social side of RPGs ever. I've seen no other GM ever do this or even see it talked about online which is crazy since its so simple but so powerful.

They are literally 5-10 mins set aside specifically for players to talk in-character with each other. They can be interspersed in your session flow as much or as little you like. Ideally, you encourage players to get up, walk around and chat with each other. If they need to make a roll, they come straight back to you and roll in your presence -- other than that, you can get on with some admin work (or hasty re-plan of your scenario if its gone off the rails!).

It's really just a big breather for you as a GM but it's a fun one. I've found players will hedge into cliques of 2-4 and they can be fluid based on IC events and internal politics. This is awesome because newer players tend to cling together and experienced link up based on their particular IC needs -- it's also handy for reining in players who are bit antisocial or think they're a Puppetmaster(tm).

It's pretty great to see it all when you step back!

That's a great idea!!

Damn... I just gave PrometheanVigil XP!!!

I'm worried some players might not be keen ...Maybe if I offered some XP?

Edit: Just realised, 5e Inspiration looks perfect for this!